How Cam Girls Are Changing The Porn Industry

Why Is This Important?

Because the internet is allowing so many entrepreneurs to carve out a space for themselves in industries that were formerly dominated by corporations.

Long Story Short

Elle Magazine recently published a piece on a 25-year-old "cam girl" who creates highly-stylized porn out of a studio in Leeds — and is gaining a sizeable audience doing it.

Long Story

Forget everything you thought you knew about the porn industry. A new wave of entrepreneurs are carving out a space for themselves in the industry, and are doing it on their own terms.

Just as the internet has helped to decentralize services in the hotel industry (Airbnb) and transportation industry (Uber), so too is it now allowing individuals to take porn production into their own hands.

Elle Magazine recently published an interview with a 25-year-old cam girl who calls herself "Vex Ashley" (@vextape on Twitter and Instagram). Ashley produces highly-stylized, cinematic pornography out of her studio and artists co-op "Four Chambers" in Leeds.

When it comes to profit, the former art student doesn't rely on her films. She has roughly 6,000 followers who watch her live-cam stream every day, which is enough to cover her personal costs. She raises money for her films through crowdfunding, which allows her to maintain artistic integrity, work with whoever she wants and experiment.

Just looking at her pictures on Twitter, the aesthetic of her photos is like that of an alt hipster craft bazaar: tattoos, piercings, geometric gold jewelry, plant life, mutlicolored seashells and sunlight casting artistic shadows on women with dyed hair standing in ateliers beside vintage furniture.

The not-for-profit nature of her films means there isn't a dynamic of exploitation for profit between Ashley and those who star in her films, a common feature of the professional porn industry. Ashley also told Elle that all the videos are "co-owned by everyone involved."

Ashley is not alone in deciding to take the distribution of videos and images of her naked body into her own hands. Earlier this year, the release of "Snapcash", a feature added to Snapchat that allows you to send money to contacts, unintentionally opened up a new revenue stream for porn stars and strippers who want to independently profit off their own erotic photos and videos.

Ashley is also capitalizing on the increasing audience of female porn viewers. She tells Elle that more than half of her viewers identify as female. And although, based on a recent survey by Pornhub and a recent panel discussion on porn for women, there is a sizeable portion of the female porn-watching audience looking for rough sex and rape fantasies, Ashley's viewership shows that there is also a demand for atmospheric, "beautiful" porn. A demand that has largely gone unfilled by major porn producers.

The young entrepreneur told Elle that she hopes this decentralization of porn production allows more individuals to produce creative expressions of sexuality that are "more representative of the breadth of human sexual experience."

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question: Will independent porn producers eventually cut into the profit of the professional porn industry?Disrupt Your Feed: Diversify your porn intake — try some indie porn.Drop This Fact: Although porn stars and strippers make money by selling pornography through Snapchat, the practice is forbidden in Snapchat's community rules.